Saturday, July 12, 2014

How to cut your exposure to cell-phone radiation

Published: July 12, 2014 06:00 AM

Q. Is it true that cell phones emit dangerous levels of radiation?

A. Possibly. Cell phones expose you to radio­frequency electromagnetic energy, a form of “non-ionizing” radiation (similar to what’s emitted from microwave ovens). Some studies have suggested that cell-phone use alters brain function and may increase the risk of some cancers, although the overall evidence hasn’t found a clear link. More study is needed to determine the health effects of cell-phone use, and what constitutes a safe level of use.

Friday, July 11, 2014

FCC Approves $2 Billion Boost for Wi-Fi in Schools

By Chris Strohm July 11, 2014

The Federal Communications Commission approved a plan to spend $2 billion to boost wireless Internet connectivity in U.S. schools and libraries during the next two years.

“We’re at a watershed moment,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said during a hearing in Washington today in which the panel voted 3-2 to approve the plan he proposed in April. “Because of what we do today 10 million kids will be connected next year who otherwise wouldn’t. That’s a good days work.”

The move will phase out funding under a program known as E-rate for old technologies like pagers and dial-up phone service in order to subsidize broadband and wireless Internet connections in classrooms and libraries.

It doesn’t seek to increase rates paid by customers of telecommunications services or the program’s $2.4 billion annual budget cap, even though at least one Republican commissioner fears that’s what will eventually happen.

The proposal seeks to modernize the E-rate program in order to make good on President Barack Obama’s directive last year to expand broadband access to 99 percent of U.S. students. Facebook Inc. (FB:US), Netflix Inc. (NFLX:US) and Bloomberg LP, the owner of Bloomberg News, sent FCC commissioners a letter July 7 supporting Wheeler’s proposal because “the plan will make dramatic progress in bringing high-speed connectivity to our classrooms.”

Wi-Fi Funding

The commission will pay for expanded Wi-Fi financing by redirecting $2 billion in existing funds from reserve accounts. The E-rate program is paid for by fees that telecommunications providers are required to charge customers in their monthly bills.

Companies benefit from subsidized payments to schools and libraries under the program, includingAT&T Inc. (T:US)Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ:US),CenturyLink Inc. (CTL:US)andComcast Corp. (CMCSA:US), according to the Universal Service Administrative Company, a Washington-based nonprofit that administers the funds.

Wheeler’s proposal is flawed because it promises $5 billion for Wi-Fi without identifying a source for the money, Ajit Pai, one of two commission Republicans, said in a July 8 statement.

“The FCC has forfeited this opportunity for real, bipartisan reform of the E-rate program,” Pai said at the meeting today. “In five months, maybe six, we’ll be back at this table to talk about how much to raise” U.S. consumer phone bills.

Phone-Owner Cost

An increase of “probably on the order of $5 or less a year on cellphone owners, on an individual cellphone owner” may be needed to meet Obama’s goal, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in an August press briefing.

Ninety-seven percent of U.S. classrooms are connected to the Internet, up from 14 percent when the E-rate program was created in 1997. School administrators say just connecting isn’t enough -- they need speed and service in more classrooms and that costs more.

Three out of five U.S. schools lack sufficient wireless capability and E-rate has only been able to support Wi-Fi in 5 percent of schools and 1 percent of libraries, Wheeler wrote in a June 20 blog post.

Lower Prices

“The new plan will make E-rate dollars go farther by creating processes to drive down prices and increase transparency on how program dollars are spent,” Wheeler said. “And it will simplify the application process for schools and libraries, making the program more efficient while reducing the potential for fraud and abuse.”

The plan seeks to increase the program’s efficiency by making the application process easier and adding protections against fraud and abuse, Wheeler said.

Poor and rural schools could see less funding for Internet connectivity under the plan, Democratic Senators Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, and Edward Markey of Massachusetts wrote in a July 8 letter to Wheeler.

“Efforts to make Wi-Fi technology ubiquitous in our schools and libraries cannot come at the expense of the already limited funding that keeps these institutions connected,” they wrote. “It would be ill-advised to guarantee a permanent set-aside for Wi-Fi, if that set-aside could end up cannibalizing funding for basic Internet connectivity.”

The senators said they oppose a new formula to base E-rate funding on the number of students enrolled at an applying school and the square footage of a library requesting aid. They asked Wheeler to test the allocation formula for two years.

They also asked Wheeler to consider raising the permanent funding cap for the program in order to put it “on a solid financial foundation” for the future.

“Our worries are shared by schools and libraries, both urban and rural, and the educators and librarians who work at these institutions,” they wrote. “They are on the front lines of this program in classrooms and libraries across the country.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Strohm in Washington at cstrohm1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Wasserman at ewasserman2@bloomberg.net Steve Geimann

About 1 in 4 young teens meet screen-time guidelines

Only 27% of kids ages 12-15 meet the recommended limit of two hours or less of TV plus computer use daily, new government statistics show.

And 7% of kids this age reported watching five hours or more a day of TV, while 5% said they used a computer for five hours or more, according to the 2012 data analyzed by the National Center for Health Statistics. At the other end of the spectrum, just less than 2% reported no daily TV viewing, and 9% reported no computer use.

This is the first time that this particular age group's screen-use habits have been examined using this combined set of sources, "so there's no real trend data to say that, yes, these kids are watching more TV or less," says Kirsten Herrick, a NCHS epidemiologist and lead author of the new report.

Herrick says getting an accurate read on the extent of kids' screen-usage is complicated by all the new technologies now available. "We don't know, for example, how kids would have categorized watching TV on a cellphone. Technology has outpaced our ability to capture (usage), so we might have an overestimation or an underestimation. We're really not sure."

Excessive screen-time use has been linked to elevated blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, and being overweight or obese among kids, the report notes. Screen-time behavior established in adolescence has been shown to continue into adulthood, it adds.

As a result, the American Academy of Pediatrics says children and teens should engage with entertainment media for no more than one or two hours per day, and the media content should be of "high quality." The AAP says that children under age 2 should get no screen time.

Using data from the 2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and the 2012 NHANES National Youth Fitness Survey, the new report also shows that as kids' weight increased, the percentage of those who reported watching two hours or less of TV viewing and computer use declined.

One-third (31%) of youths classified as underweight or normal weight reported two hours or less of TV viewing and computer use daily, compared with 23% of overweight kids, and 20% of obese kids.

Herrick cautions that the report cannot say that screen time causes weight gain because these kids were looked at once, but it does show an "association" between the two.

Among other findings in the NCHS report:

Nearly all (99%) adolescents said they watched TV daily; 91% reported using the computer daily outside of school.

Although there were no significant gender differences associated with the amount of TV viewing, girls were more likely than boys to report using the computer for two hours or less a day (80% vs. 69%).

Tech CEOs Request Billions For

School Wi-Fi

3:05 PM 07/08/2014

A group of tech leaders is urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to spend billions expanding access to wireless Internet in the nation’s schools and libraries.

The group of 41 leaders, which includes Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and Star Wars director George Lucas sent a letter to the FCC on Monday encouraging them to ratify a proposed plan by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler that would allocate $5 billion to expand the government’s E-Rate program to put Wi-Fi in as many schools as possible.

“The Chairman’s proposal is a significant, fiscally responsible step forward in modernizing the E-rate program and connecting our schools,” the letter reads. “The message from America is clear, if our schools do not have the broadband they need, our students will not be able to compete in the global economy.”

The letter urges “swift, bipartisan action” by the FCC’s commissioners to verify the proposal.

Wheeler’s proposal, which will be voted on Thursday, would add the additional $5 billion on top of E-Rate’s $2.4 billion annual budget, which exists to help schools buy a a variety of technological goods at reduced prices. If approved, the FCC estimates that by 2015, 10 million additional students would have access to Wi-Fi.

The tech leaders aren’t the first to show approval for Wheeler’s plan. Several education groups have praised it, or have offered criticism solely on the basis that it does not go far enough. The Consortium for School Networking, a group promoting educational technology, has complained that billions more are needed to achieve President Obama’s stated goal of 99 percent of American students having wireless Internet access at school.

The American Library Association, meanwhile, said in a statement that getting every school and library access to high-speed, high-capacity broadband Internet was more important than increased Wi-Fi access.

Some groups say the entire endeavor is misguided, however.

“Expanding the E-Rate Program, spending more money on technology, will almost certainly have very little if any effect on educational outcomes,” Neal McCluskey, an education analyst with the Cato Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

McCluskey said that most evidence indicates that things like increased Internet access show little to no connection with test scores or other measures of academic success, while in the workplace, employers are worried far more about the lack of basic skills than they are about lack of familiarity with technology.

Using smart meters to stream free WiFi possible here

One California city is the first in the US

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Santa Clara, California has become the first city in the US to offer free WiFi throughout the city by using smart meters. But is that possible here?

“The smart meter works because it’s in every home about 50 feet from each other and it’s a regular power connection,” says tech journalist Akash Sablok.

He adds people can typically access the Internet anywhere in town and there will be fewer folks running into coffee shops or hotels to get online.

It’s also a great draw for tourists. “It’s nice for tourists to be able to come into our city, have a data connection, connect their phone and be able to get around the city; using their maps or anything like that they need on their portable device,” explains Sablok.

He sees more cities around North America jumping onto the idea. “Every streetlight in the city could basically do the same thing. So, they could add the WiFi router to the streetlight and power it there and the WiFi shoots down. It could work that way as well.”

Sablok adds it’s also good for power companies as it takes away some of the negative stigma from smart meters. There is only one drawback. Streaming TV and movies will be very slow.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

To comprehensively analyze the relationship between human exposure to extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields (ELF-EMFs) and breast cancer and to discuss the potential risk of ELF-EMFs to human breast cancer.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

Sixteen research reports of case-control studies which were published from 2000 to 2007 were collected. The fixed effect model (FEM) or the random effect model (REM) was chosen to calculate total ORs depending on the outcomes of the test of homogeneity (Q test): the subgroup was analyzed with the menopause and the non-menopause.

C4ST Reviews Ignored Studies

Table 2. Publications (2009 to 2014) indicating
significant effects of microwave radiation that were not reviewed by Health
Canada, the Royal Society of Canada or SCENIHR, and percentage of references
provided to RSC in 2013.

Topic

Number of
Publications Not Reviewed

% Provided
to RSC in 2013

A1. Cancer (2011-2014)

9

7/9

A2. Genetic Damage
(2011-2014)

14

10/15

B. Reproduction (Adult)

14

10/14

C. Development, Behaviour,
Acute Physiological Effect

30

25/31

D. Neurological Effects

44

31/44

E. Eye

7

5/6

F. Cardiovascular Effects

3

2/4

G. Electromagnetic
Hypersensitivity (EHS)

8

8/8

H. Biochemical Effects

65

48/65

TOTAL UNIQUE PUBLICATIONS

139

103/139

Virtually all publications were
available to Health Canada on when the Safety Code 6 (2014) Draft was
posted online.

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About Me

While I have always been extremely health conscious and am presently in excellent health, I did become temporarily out-of-commission (i.e. I was really sick) in 2005 with a number of at the time unexplainable symptoms. I was quite puzzled at the time because I had been eating mainly organically grown food, drinking spring water, doing Yoga every morning, and going to the gym several times a week. In other words, I was doing everything one is supposed to do to stay healthy. I was not supposed to get sick. It took me six months before discovering or even imagining the main source of the problem - which was in fact "overexposure to electromagnetic" - especially microwave - radiation. I was living within 200 meters of two cell phone towers at the time and within 500 meters of a 3rd one with numerous WiFi signals bleeding into my apartment from adjacent neighbors. I developed a host of symptoms, which are found in what has been misleadingly described as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) -- but much more accurately described as Radio Wave or Microwave Sickness. Large numbers of people in the USA suddenly started getting sick in 1984...